


Snippets of Rebellion (Old)

by InnerPower



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Homeworld (Steven Universe), Other, Rebellion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24173776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerPower/pseuds/InnerPower
Summary: The Great Diamond Authority demands perfection from its subjects. Only absolute obedience will be tolerated. Imperfections, of which deviance is certainly included, will not be allowed to exist. But, the Diamonds cannot be everywhere at once. The Empire is incredibly large, and even the immense population of the gems cannot fill every space on their myriad of planets.Somewhere, someone, somehow, there is always a spark, a shard, a sliver…Of rebellion.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	1. Glass Knives

**Author's Note:**

> My first proper work in this fandom, I hope to bring some people's spirits up who are sad about our dear beloved steven going away.
> 
> (I've decided that I don't like writing the way I did for the 5th chapter, so I'm starting this fic again but keeping the style the way it was in the first four. Hopefully I'll like that better! It has the same name as this one, so it's easy to find.)

On a remote colony, in an unoccupied construction area, in an isolated room, a figure stands, nearly motionless but for a slight shivering of their hunched posture.

They are nervous, and excited, and afraid, and yearning. They’ve felt this, this  _ desire _ , filling them up until their very gem feels like it’s needling them from where it rests in their forehead, building and building for who-knows how long, a thousand years at least.

They remember when they first had the inspiration to act on the feeling. Rumors, carried in whispers and codes and secrets only known within gem types. A rebellion, they had heard. Everyone had, of course, news of the rebellion and the shattering of Pink Diamond was broadcasted through official channels to every colony and outpost. But what had slowly filtered out from that forsaken planet, was something much more…  _ inflammatory. _

First-hand accounts. Details and information from the battles themselves, those who could escape back to Homeworld space before the colony was erased. A tall, burgundy gem, slamming agates and citrines and topazes to the ground. A tourmaline who blasted hurricane-force winds, bowling over whole platoons of soldiers. A bismuth, using her shapeshifted tools to hack and slash through trained quartz squadrons.

It was that last one that had inspired her. The instant she heard, something just clicked in her head. None of the others seemed to understand, her fellow Painites happy to gossip quietly while waiting for their next carving orders to come in. So, she found an opportunity to slip away, using service tunnels for construction gems and unfinished corridors until she was certain that no-one could find her.

She went motionless, her squarish and angular dark red body becoming nearly indistinguishable from any of the elaborate statues that other, more finely equipped gem types would carve.

Slowly, like flowing mud over stone, a burgundy light pulses from her gem, it’s square pyramid thrown into sharp relief as her power flows over her body. Her form begins to change as the light hits it, the angles becoming sharper, the lines more rigid, the curves tapering to points as the edges of her body become more solid. The looks down at her hands, the fingers now jagged claws, capable of tearing through stone and metal and fabric like a destabilizer cuts through hardlight, and something feels  _ correct  _ about it.

She imagines, then, the look on the face of the feldspar that commands them, the bossy clump of mud. The terror she might feel as she saw the being of edges and blades approach her, and the satisfaction of tearing through her pompous frilly outfit, hands closing around the gemstone, tracing it with a finger that could leave lines in metal-

She grins, her teeth now sharper than any knife, as her eyes glow sullenly crimson.

She knows what her next assignment is, now.


	2. Junkyard Gem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse of the plight of our good friend Helenite.

In a large room beneath the surface of the world, the debris of the surface above collects.

It’s deliberate, of course, as is everything in the Authority. The debris and unusable junk from the surface are sent down here to be melted down and split into their composite elements, to be re-used for future projects. There’s a resource shortage going on, after all. 

Amidst all of this junk exists a gem. She narrows her eyes as more rock dust falls onto the pile she was working on. She hates it when the gems above send boulders down here. What fun could they even get out of it anyway? It’s not like they’re the ones that have to clean it up every time. And who cares about Helenites anyway? They probably don’t even remember she exists down here.

As the boulder crashes down onto her half-finished pile, she groans in frustration, running a hand over her face and through her messy, dark green hair, let free from her “regulation” form and left to bounce freely about her head. She rolls her neck, pressing a hand to her gem on the back of it, before glaring at the rock and shoving both of her hands onto it. 

Her gem glows a toxic green as fissures spread out from her fingertips, the rock cracking and melting and falling until it’s merely scattered lumps of magma and flakes of dust.

She sends a dark look at the flat, sterile walls of her room, plan all around except for the chute where she sends separated raw resources back to the refineries and factories.

One day, those walls will crumble under her fingertips just like everything else.


	3. Solar Flare

Staring at the searing metal in front of her, Plasma Agate is frustrated. She does the best welding job in this whole stars-damned sector, and when her superiors review her, they have the  _ audacity _ to downplay her accomplishments? The original method was flawed, and she made sure that the bems wouldn’t separate due to the massive temperature changes on this planet, and they say things like “rather good, for an  _ off-color, _ of course.” Cyan blotching be damned, she’s as good if not better than every other Agate on her site.

Oh, and how she hates that she gets talked down to by  _ another Agate, _ of all gems. They both know that Plasma Agates have duties unlike other Agate types due to their unique and invaluable abilities, but that  _ stars-damned, brittle, faded  _ **_pebble_ ** of a gem talks to her like she’s a week-old Ruby?!?

She gets slammed out of her thoughts when a fist socks her on the head. “7TY,  _ what in the stars' names are you doing?  _ Get your gem on your work or you’ll be sent to the Harvester and power a heat regulator for the rest of eternity, _ am I clear? _ ”

She rolls her eyes and calms her plasma down from where it had been arcing all over the place in her rage, pushing her anger down for later. “ _ Yes _ , Condor Agate.”

“Hmph. Good.”

As she gets back into the rhythm of checking the seam in her metal for any ridges or air pockets, she thinks back to what she’s been ruminating on for the better part of a century. Her plasma powers. All Plasma Agates have them, and their usefulness in welding and metal construction is what led to them being a separate class from other Agates. But, she’s always felt like they’ve been limited by her purpose. She could do so much more than just superheat metal with them, but she’s never given the freedom to try.

Discreetly, she exercises tight control over her plasma and does something that she thinks is unique to her. The edge of her glowing orange plasma shifts into cyan, and she runs a finger over it absentmindedly, tracing the slight surface that forms over her cloud of energy, feeling how solid it is. 

She grins, the gem on her solar plexus pulsing once as her power surges forward and the little blade of plasma thrusts forward, nicking the edge of the metal and shearing off a little flake that she catches in her hand. She can reattach it later, it doesn’t matter.

She can’t wait to see the look on Condor’s face when she presses it up against her stupid chin gem, and does that move one more time.

It’ll be wonderful.


	4. First Shards

Labradorite 4YP has noticed something off lately. The team of Painites that she commands has been somehow  _ different _ lately. It’s probably 4KX, she’s been standoffish lately, more so than usual. Always going off on her own, starting from the wrong side of all her carvings just to spite her. And now, going off on her own to an incomplete portion of the colony?

Oh, she’s definitely reporting this. It’s her duty to put any  _ unruly _ gems in their place, after all.

4YP turns the corner and sees the hallway come to an end, a wall of hastily chiseled rock not yet cut away, empty but for a single door on the left wall. It’s dark, but she can just about see the burgundy glow of a Painite with her hyper-focused vision.

“4KX, I don’t know what you’re doing in there, but rest assured you will be-... punished...”

She trails off after she enters the doorway.

Her scanning vision locks onto the being in the center of the room, taking in every detail with the precision that the Diamonds made her for. What she sees in that room doesn’t look like any Painite she’s ever seen. Every curve replaced with sharp and straight edges. Not that Painites had many curves to begin with, but it’s still unsettling. Arms with bladed hardlight edges, hands and feet with wicked-looking claws, teeth jagged and gleaming. Even her  _ hair _ looks like it could shatter stone.

Painite 4KX cocks her head at her, the tinkling of skin sharp as any quartz’s weapon breaking the silence. Her mouth pulls tight into a feral grin and eyes widen with anticipation, and she looks like something that gems never needed a word for before encountering organics. What was it- Ah, that’s right.

_ Predatory. _

There’s a flare of dull burgundy light, and before Labradorite can react, frozen with horror as she is, 4KX launches at her, her vision tunneling and detailing every last dimension on her claws that look sharp enough to  _ shatter- _

And she’s gone, an explosion of dust all that’s left of her form after wine-red claws tear through her hardlight like a knife through organic substance.

Fingers close over her squared gem, no-longer sharp but tensed, squeezing the stone that is her entire being.

Painite looks down at her hand, reveling in how  _ wonderful _ that felt. To tear through her superior officer like that, to vent all the  _ frustration _ and  _ rage _ that accumulated in her like dust on an empty shelf.

Her gem flares, and her fingers become stony claws once more.

She squeezes, once, and with a disappointingly quiet  _ crunch _ , Labradorite Feldspar 4YP is no more.

The shards tinkle to the ground, and she grins.


	5. Meeting Monsters

Plasma Agate is nervous. Ooh, this is scary, but she can’t back down now. Wandering through the abandoned base-level corridors of the unfinished colony, in the dark, by herself. (Or maybe not, that’s why she’s here, after all.)

It all started a few months ago. News of a mid-ranking construction team leader’s sudden shattering quickly spread to the colonies’ administrators, who, after learning of the location of the incident, rapidly dispatched a team of on-site Quartzes to deal with whatever was happening. 

They were never heard from again. 

A squadron of mixed soldiers was sent in next time, various castes and types of warriors in the hopes that their new skill sets would eventually prevail over whatever had killed the first team.

All that returned the next time was a terrified Ruby, barely holding herself together, with four orderly scratches across her gem. She was glitching already, form fluctuating and nearly poofing out of a combination of terror and physical trauma, but she managed to hold herself together long enough to babble something about a “monster” in the tunnels and how it was “like a gem, but  _ wrong _ .”

After two more platoons vanished, they stopped sending them, and instructed all gems to not travel to the abandoned areas of the colony.

She didn’t quite know why she felt the need to come down here, but it felt like a thread was yanking on her gem until she got up from her work station, made an excuse about filing some report, and made her way down to the tunnels.

With the lighting systems inactive, she had to make due with the beam from her gem and whatever light she could squeeze out of her plasma to see, which didn’t help the current situation with her fear at all.

  
  


There was a muffled  _ crunch _ from under her foot. She looked down, and reeled back in surprise, seeing shards spread across the ground in front of her, lit by the eerie orange glow of the plasma in her hand.

As she scanned her head around, spinning in place so her gem could light up her whole surroundings, a voice suddenly sounded out above her, making her jump nearly a foot in the air in surprise.

“ _ Now _ then, what do we have  _ here _ ? Another gem, sent for me? How kind the upper-crusts are. Such easy work.”

On the ceiling, further up than the light from her gem could reach, an angular figure hung, mostly hidden by the dark but for a dull red glow highlighting the sharp edges and ridges that made up the gem’s body.

“Wait! Wait, I’m not here to capture you, I promise, I just want to talk, please?”

The upside-down gem cocks her head in surprise, before quickly dropping down, reorienting in the air faster than her eyes could track, before landing with a thud right in front of her.

“Oh? What might you want to talk to me about,  _ Agate? _ ”

“Well, I, just, umm… why did you do it? And-”

The gem, a Painite she now realizes, grins. “I did it because I  _ wanted  _ to. Tell me,  _ Agate, _ have you ever just _ wanted _ to do something that everyone said you couldn’t do? Have you ever felt  _ limited, _ not just by your place in the hierarchy, but by your  _ purpose? _ ”

“Yes! I have! I just wanted to know how you could do what you did, how you could just,” She gestured around randomly, “DO, all of this, shatter squads of soldiers, become some fugitive terrifying-” 

She cuts herself off and sighs, dragging a hand down her face.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is, you’ve done what I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and how can I do the same?”

**Author's Note:**

> Very much inspired by Little Rebellions, I'm trying to emulate that style mostly while including gems besides Pearls.
> 
> I'm probably going to try out some different writing styles in other places, but this first fic is for these short descriptive chapters.
> 
> (I've decided that I don't like writing the way I did for the 5th chapter, so I'm starting this fic again but keeping the style the way it was in the first four. Hopefully I'll like that better! It has the same name as this one, so it's easy to find.)


End file.
